Before Our Petals Wilt
by carved in the sand
Summary: "I want to peel away your clothes, your skin, until you're nothing more than a skeleton." - NejiTen


**A/N:** _But. Can I say. That this was written way before Neji was violently stabbed through with that giant tooth pick and SCREAMS NEJI I MISS YOU SO MUCH I LOVE YOU DARLING and so being the sort of in-denial victim that I am, I've decided to go ahead and forget trying to mess with this and make this canonly-accurate. This will probably hurt you as much as it hurt me, but then you'll be okay because *~*~*happy ending*~*~*. I mean, I can make all the "Neji died for our OTP" jokes but it still hurts. And I may be a masochist, but come the fuck on the jokes on tumblr made the crying easier to handle. _

_So yeah. Basically, if you don't ship NejiTen, then I cannot engage you in friendship. And I'm only slightly kidding._

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They were genin, a year into their rank, during the stage when their teamwork skills had shifted from developing to solidarity, their abilities and talent meshing together into more than promising. They'd just finished a mission on the borders of the Fire Country when Gai-sensei had proclaimed their teamwork as "legendary".

Neji had quietly sulked int the background, a few steps away from where the rest of his team walked forward and talked jovially - even Tenten , whereas she was usually trailing behind by his side, but the compliments that Gai was doling out to the two of them…..

It was either the team, Tenten, or Rock Lee receiving praise. Neji was either criticized or left out all together.

And it was_ infuriating._

The foursome had passed through a town, bright and alive with something called the Crescent Festival, and they'd split into pairs, with Lee trailing after Gai-sensei with a flurry, and Tenten falling beside him.

She bumped his shoulder with her own, a cheeky grin splitting her face. He wanted to wipe it off. Or maybe smack a few chakra-points and make the muscles in her face go lax for a while. "So why the hell are you so moody, Young Prodigy?" Tenten prompted happily.

"I'm fine."

"And I'm a blonde, right?"

Neji glared coldly at her, one brow cocked.

"He just doesn't want to inflate your stupid ego anymore, Neji," Tenten huffed, the smile disappearing and being replaced by a pucker. "There's no need to get in a tizzy just because you aren't showered in unnecessary and embellished praise. You already know you're a freaking genius with _oodles_ of talent. No one needs to confirm it for you."

Neji blinked, completely startled at her words. "Do you really think I need Gai's approval-,"

The musicians began to play, and Tenten had systematically drowned him out with her gasping. They stood off to the side of the stone path, a small stage nestled between a dango stand and a fried octopus stand. The shamisen plucked away at an old love song that he could distantly remember hearing somewhere before, while the rest of them fell into place.

And she began to dance.

With all the grace he'd seen in team training, and all the fluidity that he'd never gotten to witness before, she spun and flowed with the music. Neji's mouth had gone dry, left gaping, pride and arrogance left forgotten with the rest of his mental capacities.

The song hit a cresendo, the different instruments' sounds crashing together, maintaining their unity and tying the string of notes together, intricate like a physical embrodery, and Tenten twirled, and twirled, and _twirled-_

She knocked into his chest, and his hands managed to catch her without the help of his brain. She giggled brightly as the music ended, looking up along with Neji as a crowd of people around them began to applaud. He nearly sputtered - when the hell had they gotten here?

"That was the best. I love that song," Tenten cooed, straightening herself and grasping Neji's wrists. "Promise me you'll dance with me someday."

"What?" he spat. _"Dance?"_

"Yeah! It's so much fun. It's sort of like fighting. Except less painful." Tenten shook her head, waving the hair that had fallen out of her buns from over her forehead. "Promise me. _C'mon_, Neji. Please?"

He muttered something that vaguely sounded like an agreement, and he'd never seen her smile so brightly.

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Neji sat beneath the shade of a large oak tree in his usual training grounds, not training.

He sat despairingly alone, with nothing but the grass and the birds and the leaves on the trees to witness his self-loathing. His thoughts were in a turmoil, boiling and stewing like rotten slime under a hot fire. Nothing felt right.

The Hyuuga compound was too stuffy and restricting for him to even breathe. Unconsciously, he raced here.

His legs were crossed underneath him, with his hands folded in his lap, spastically clenching and unclenching into fists. He'd tried all of his meditation techniques in vain. His hopelessness, fury, anger, and disappointment

He didn't bother to look up when he first heard the footsteps approaching him.

Tenten sat down in front of him, heaving a sigh, as if she were carrying a particularly large weight. Neji's pale eyes stayed obstinately on the ground, ignoring her presence.

"You're always brooding over something," she said plainly. Tenten pulled his clenched fists from his lap and smoothed them out like crumpled paper. The stress in his body curled away like tendrils of smoke, fingers going limp inside her hands. "You failed a mission. Big freaking deal."

"My _first_ mission as a _Chuunin_, and I botch it," he hissed. "It is unacceptable. I am a Hyuuga. My clan, nor I, do not tolerate anything less than perfection."

"Perfection? Really? Guess what, honey?" Tenten dropped one of his hands and grasped his chin, pulling it up to meet her eyes - brown, brown eyes, like chocolate, like tree bark - with thinly-veiled frustration. "You're _never_ gonna be perfect. It's goddamned impossible. And I don't care what rank you are - you're going to be messing up and learning from your mistakes for the rest of your life."

He jerked her chin away from her grasp. "How the hell is that supposed to _comfort_ me?"

"I'm not here to comfort you, dummy. I'm here to give you a kick in the head whenever you need it," Tenten said haughtily, holding both of his hands within hers' once again. "Whether that is verbal - or_physical_ - is entirely my choice."

Neji looked at her again with a sharp glare. "You're insufferable."

Tenten giggled. "Oh, shut up."

They stayed quiet for a while, Tenten tracing invisible patterns on his palms, when she suddenly spoke.

"You try to carry the entire weight of the world on your shoulders."

Neji merely shrugged. "It is not the weight of the world," he murmured. "Just….the weight that I am expected to carry."

She squeezed his hands together, almost comfortingly. "But you're still buckling under the weight, aren'tcha?"

He did not speak.

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"You are a_ fucking idiot_."

"I'm a jounin."

Neji laid down on the hospital with a content smile on his face. Tenten sat in the uncomfortable chair as she looked over her teammate with clear disdain. She hated hospitals. They only spelled out bad luck and smelled of ammonia and were constantly kept at chilly temperatures. But after Neji passed his jounin exams with flying colors-

_-and a concussion, three broken ribs, a sprained ankle, leg fractured in three places, dislocated shoulder, dehydrated, over-used Byakugan, and the over-expenditure of his chakra,' _Tenten thought bitterly, the list of ailments leaving a bitter taste on her tongue_-_

-he'd been promptly released to the hospital. Sakura had patched him up within a few minutes, but she couldn't do much about the concussion. Neji was still loopy from the morphine pumped into him.

"Like they aren't synonymous," Tenten spat, tone sharp and motherly. "Why the hell did you feel the need to destroy your body? Kakashi-sensei told me exactly what happened. You're so irresponsible with your own body, Neji."

"I am a jounin. I don't care about anything else," he answered cheerfully. The Hyuuga prodigy turned his neck and met her eyes. "You have really brown eyes."

"Focus!"

"On what?"

Tenten groaned loudly, getting up from her chair and plopping herself down on Neji's bed. He winced at the sudden shift in his bed, and winced again when Tenten grasped his face within her gloved hands.

"One day you're going to push yourself too hard and I'll be a bitter old woman sitting by your grave, wondering what the hell went wrong." Her tone was quiet and venomous. "I don't care if you're the smartest person in the world. You're sixteen, and you lack experience, and patience. You're trying to get yourself killed too fast."

He fell silent, blinking at her unknowingly.

Tenten stood from his bedside and stomped out of the room, slamming the door on the way out.

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Neji took deep, even breaths, in and out, inhale and exhale, to try and regulate himself. He was dead-tired, his eyes ached like hell, and his back hurt from the extra load he was carrying.

"So," he started. "How was your first mission as a jounin?"

"I'm sorry," Tenten whimpered into his shoulder again. "Really. I am."

"That has to be the hundredth time you've apologized in the last two hours." Neji took another deep breathe and continued to trudge through the forestry with his head held high.

He carried Tenten on his back, his arms supporting her leg, and being especially careful not to disturb the left leg, which had been broken from her fall from the daimyo's house - over six stories. "Stop worrying about it."

"But you're in so much pain and I ruined every-"

"The Hyuuga have an old proverb," Neji said briskly, cutting off her sentence. "_Shikata na gai._ 'It must be endured'. It has gotten me through many difficult times in my life. This is nothing in comparison."

Tenten laughed breathily, and then proceeded to make Neji's heart stop.

She brushed his hair away from his ear, and place a kiss just under his neck. Her lips were warm again the sensitive skin, burning a trail of liquid fire over his skin. Every nerve in his body went on overdrive.

"I remember when we were eleven, I thought you never worked for anything like Lee and I did. Everything came so naturally to you, and...I underestimated your drive, I guess? Tenacity. I love that about you. You're really strong," she muttered, snuggling into his shoulder. _"Shikata na gai."_

_"Shikata na gai."_ Neji swallowed, took in a large breathe, and endured.

"Are you really sure that you need that many weapons?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Are you the weapons specialist?"

Neji damn near pouted at her, but Tenten continued to open new seals in her scroll and stuff it with piles of shuriken, kunai, katana, smoke bombs, several katana, and a myriad of other things that made the young Hyuuga stare at her in worry. He questioned how heavy it would be for her to go sprinting around carrying that thing around.

Not that he doubted her strength. He's seen the muscles of her thighs and legs and arms and everything else. The girl was a monster.

They stood in one of the many, many tents in the Shinobi Alliance campsite, where the soldiers were getting themselves ready. Lee had already bounded off ahead of them. "Calm down. I was just wondering."

"Oh please. You've been nagging me all week, and I'm sick of it," Tenten said, straightening from the table where she'd laid out all her things. Neither were dressed appropriately yet: both missing their flak jackets, Neji without his shoes as he sat cross legged on the futon across the tent, and Tenten without her forehead protector. "This is a war, and I did not bring my mother along. Stop acting like one."

Neji rolled his eyes. "I'm just concerned."

"Quit it. I'm going to be fine."

He sighed, head turning away from her gaze towards the flap of the tent. The second they'd walk out, they'd go separate ways, be separated along with Lee and Gai, and each other, and he hated it.

Tenten walked over to the futon, and dropped onto it gracelessly, her head finding its way to his lap. She looked up into his eyes as he continued to ignore her. "I am going to be fine. Lee is going to be fine. Gai is going to be fine. We'll be fine, Neji. Come _on_."

"Do not belittle my worries," Neji answered gruffly, staring down at the girl sprawled across his lap.

"Shut the fuck up."

"Your vulgar language will do nothing."

"Then why don't you do something."

Tenten threaded her fingers through his hair and pulled him down closer. "Tell me you'll come back to me and this team. Tell me now. And then you go out there, you live, and you do everything in your power to keep your goddamned word to me," she hissed. "Do you hear me? I'm worry much more than you, Mister Hotshot Hyuuga who's going to be a total target. Come _back_ to me."

Her eyes shone, and her voice was just starting to crack as Neji pulled her hand from his hair and squeezed it, hard and assuring and soaking his essence into her's. Just as he opened his mouth, a loud horn sounded, and they both scrambled up, preparing to leave.

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Neji hated parties.

But he hated Inuzuka Kiba more.

He sat next to Lee, in an attempt to keep him from consuming any of the alcohol laden products that floated around the room, when he'd spotted Tenten with Kiba across the room, sitting at the foot of the stairs that led to the front door, smiling in a way that twisted his insides into knots.

And it wasn't at him.

Maybe it was jealousy, maybe it was anger, or maybe it was just the way Kiba kept leaning in a fraction of a centimeter for every two and a half minutes they talked, but Neji's eyes were trained specifically trained on their stupid conversation.

"Neji-niisan?"

Neji blinked rapidly and snapped his head towards Hinata.

"Hinata-sama," he prompted, scratching behind his head uncomfortably, where his hair had been tied up in a knot. "Do you need me to take you home?"

"No, it's not that…but, I do want to ask you something."

"What is it?"

"Neji-niisan, what are you waiting for?" Hinata asked, pointedly turning her gaze to where Tenten and Kiba sat snugly at the bottom of the staircase and back to him. Neji's eyes followed her path, but did not return. Envy drenched his tongue with bitterness.

With a deep breath, he stood from his seat, and looked back towards his cousin.

"If you will excuse me, Hinata-sama," he said regally. She smiled in return and nodded, walking away happily. Neji watched as she left, walking deeper into the crowds of people, and felt horridly guilty for what he was about to do.

"Lee," he called over his shoulder. "Could you make sure that Hinata-sama makes her way home tonight with you?"

Rock Lee jumped up enthusiastically, gleaming his thousand-watt smile. "It would be a pleasure, Neji!"

He nodded, and then proceeded to make his way over to Tenten. Through the crowd of people, the blare of the music began to fade away the farther away he was from the speakers, placed at the back of the room. The second his shadow cast upon the two, Tenten looked up with her doe-like brown eyes, heavily lined with kohl.

Neji, with all the rudeness he possessed, grasped her by the wrist and yanked her up from the foot of the staircase, opened the front door, dragged Tenten outside with him, and shot Kiba his most ruthless glare from over his shoulder.

The stark fear in his eyes eased away his jealousy.

Once he'd slammed the door closed, Tenten had turned on him viciously.

"What _the fuck_?" she shrieked, poking him in the chest. Neji stared at her up close, taking in the black minidress, strappy sandals, and eyelashes that were darker and longer than he remembered them being. "Who do you think you _are_? You can't drag me around wherever the hell you want, you neanderthal!"

"I do apologize for interrupting your flirting," Neji said dully, sarcastic and unsympathetic. "You're acting like that mutt had something interesting to say."

"You-y-you- ugh! As if!" Tenten snapped, "You have nothing interesting to say ever! At all! You're like a corpse half the time! Silent and stiff and unresponsive! You have _no_ right to talk!"

"Do I?" he said questioningly. His heart was thundering an unfamiliar rhythm that couldn't have been healthy - and maybe he was about to drop dead right then and there because the way her eyes flashed when she was angry made him loose his head - but he was all calm, cool, and collected.

Neji grasped her by the upper arms and pulled her closer, bending down so that he was eye-level with her. "I've been trying to figure out what the hell goes on inside your head since we were twelve, but you already had a map of my head written out," he rasped, suddenly breathless. "I'm a bit jealous, really."

Tenten breathed in sharply, eyes widening, paying no mind as Neji's hands trailed to her wrists. "I want to dissect your brain, slice open your heart, to find what makes you tick."

His hands lifted, cradling her face none too gently. "I want to peel away your clothes….your skin…..until you're nothing more than a skeleton."

Tenten blinked at him, a beat of silence trailing on for a second in Neji's head, before she pressed her lips to his. Without thought, he kissed back, moving his lips with hers, and invading her personal space even further.

She reached up and roughly undid his top knot, making him flinch in pain, letting his dark hair fall over his head. She ran her hands through them, making him shiver, her nails trailing through his scalp.

They stumbled back to her apartment together.

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End file.
